Memories of Music
by Laura Andrews
Summary: Four short pieces, centered on music, featuring the Pevensies, Digory Kirke, Polly Plummer, and a Wiggle named Mudmarsh.


**Sophisticated**

The sound of the orchestra tuning up begins, and I look around for her. She has not yet come on stage, and then I remember that of course she will wait to enter with the conductor. I watch the side door for what seems like ten minutes but is really less than half a minute. It opens, and out comes the conductor, balding, dressed in his black suit with a white shirt. Then, _she_ comes out, in a long, narrow dress of red silk. The sleeves fan out at the elbows and rich white lace peeps out from beneath them. Her dark hair is swept up at the back, and a wavy tendril falls out just in front of each ear.

She is taking her bow; now she is tuning up her violin. The conductor turns to the orchestra, but I hardly see him. All I see is her. The sound of the orchestra reaches my ears like the distant sound of traffic. All I hear is the rich velvet of her violin as the bow glides smoothly across the strings. Her instrument sings with all her heart, and I am spellbound. I don't notice that I have moved forward until I am hardly sitting. My hands clutch the chair in front of me. When the music is ended, I rise to my feet and begin the applause that soon cascades from everyone around me. They are cheering, but I am speechless as I watch her take her bow and violin in one hand and smile. She is smiling at _me_! No, no, she is smiling at the whole audience. I sigh and continue clapping. Susan Pevensie, angel in human form, exquisite violinist, would never deign to look at an old classmate who has been hopelessly in love for years. She probably doesn't even know I'm here…

**Pure**

Lucy always had a beautiful voice. Well, so did Peter. Lucy's soprano and Peter's baritone grew better as they grew up. Edmund and I weren't much in the way of singing, though we did it on occasion when there was no one around to criticize. It didn't seem to matter that we all had the same mermfolk for our voice teachers. If a good voice could come by trying, then I, who tried hardest, shouldn't have failed the most miserably. But there it was: some people have a better voice than others. Lucy's clear, sweet tones could rival a talking nightingale's midnight serenade. Peter's rich, deep notes filled the air like a waterfall. Edmund and I often commiserated together, which was why I took up the violin when we came back from Narnia and he had some success with the flute both in Narnia and England. Sometimes, when I play, I can hear them accompanying me in my mind: Peter, deep and full, Edmund lilting away on his flute, and Lucy's pure notes blending with the violin's. I never miss them so much as when I am performing. I can even see them in the audience, cheering, and they are the ones I smile for when the performance is over.

**Pleasant**

Digory could not say that Polly had an exceptional voice. It was mostly just ordinary. But that did not keep him from enjoying it. He liked listening to and joining in with her on My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean as they weeded the garden together; he liked to hear her humming The Ash Grove when they picked apples at the Kirkes' large estate; they sat together in church and he would hear her trying to reach the high notes along with him. It never occurred to him that as he listened to her, she was listening to him as well, and trying to match her alto to his boyish soprano. As his voice deepened over the years, he missed her attempts. But whenever they got together they still sang Auld Lang Syne, no matter how out-of-tune their voices became as they aged. No, they would never have made it in a choir, definitely not as soloists, but that didn't matter.

**Bare**

It's hard for a Marshwiggle to be surrounded by cheerful music. They get jumpy inside and wonder if the sound of the music will perhaps provide the perfect cover for an assassin creeping in to murder one of the monarchs. Not only that, but cheerful is _bad_. I know, because Mudmarsh told me so when he was asked to fill in for Edmund in one of the dances.

"Your Majesty," he said. "With all due respect, but shouldn't the music be a bit slower?"  
"Why?" I asked. He was a good bit taller than me, and stooped over to put his hand on my shoulder. I knew why, of course, but I loved to tease Marshwiggles. They were so funny, with their dour outlook and gloom-and-doom personalities.

"Because, Queen Lucy, music should have only two purposes: the instruction of young and flighty Marshwiggles, and the reminder that life isn't all baked clams and dry wigwams."  
"But you're the only wiggle here, Mudmarsh."

"As I see it, one of these fauns is worse than a hundred young and flighty wiggles. This whole assembly could use some sobering up. If you would come out where it's quiet, I'll give you an example."

I followed him, secretly amused; but of course my face was almost as serious as his.

"Now, your Majesty, hearken to my song of woe. It is of a wiggle, banished for a crime that he did not commit just after marrying his truest love and building her the driest wigwam that ever was built."

He cleared his throat and then, looking so mournful I felt like crying, he began.

_The windswept moor is all around,_

_And all I hear is the moaning sound_

_Of the wind through the grasses sighing._

_All is hard and cold, harsh and bare_

_And never a wiggle has a care_

_For the place tonight where I'll be lying._

_And my truest love is lying tonight_

_In a warm wigwam with a fire bright_

_But she's cold with the tears she's crying._

_And never again will I see her face_

_For they've banished me from the marshy place,_

_To live alone for evermore…_

_For evermore…_

_Evermore._

I had tears running down my face by the end of the song. Mudmarsh looked at me approvingly and wiped away his own tears.

"That's what I call a song," he said. "None of that nonsensical, 'Dance with me 'til the night is o'er, my darling Jenny Mae.' That song I just sang has substance. Purpose."

It was the last time I danced with a wiggle on Christmas Eve.


End file.
